Exhibitions

Holly Graham: The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake

March 14, 2025 - March 15, 2026

Free Admission

Since the summer of 2023, London-based artist Holly Graham has been in residency at Manchester Art Gallery, developing her practice in exploring the ways in which memory and narrative shape collective histories. Throughout her residency, Graham has accessed the city archives, researching the institution’s history, and collections housed at Platt Hall and Manchester Art Gallery. Her work has explored the legacies of expansionism, colonialism and exploitative labour inherent to the material history of cotton.

Graham has created new work that will enter Manchester Art Gallery’s collection and takes the form of a Victorian style cotton printed costume, modelled on the silhouette of a dress worn by African American abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond. Remond visited Manchester during a tour of Britain in 1859 and delivered an anti-slavery speech in the Athenaeum, which now forms part of Manchester Art Gallery’s footprint.

Graham’s work will be displayed in dialogue with Manchester Art Gallery as a site and through its archives. She will draw on oral history recordings and textile collections to explore the legacy and impact of the cotton industry and the industrial expansion that fueled the growth of the city and the wealth of the collectors, merchants and industrialists who founded The Royal Manchester Institute (RMI), forerunner to Manchester Art Gallery in 1823.

Graham co-created the dress with her mother, Jennifer Graham, who has a career background as a costumier. The print designs within the cotton cloth reference the marbled book end papers of RMI subscribers’ logbooks and samples from the pages of Manchester Art Gallery’s pattern books. These include rare surviving examples of woven Manchester check, also known as ‘Guinea cloth’– cheaply produced cloth often for sale to West African markets in exchange for goods, including enslaved people. The pattern books donated to Manchester Art Gallery by the Calico Printers Association in 1968 contain designs which cotton print manufacturers across Lancashire produced and copied during the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Holly Graham - Film still. Hands stitching a check patterned fabric

‘I was interested in the resemblance of the check print to the grid that bound the names of the RMI subscribers in the institution’s ledgers, to highlight the names of those whose money was assigned to the founding of the institution, but also to signpost towards the names that are not included; and to think about whose labour facilitates the wealth that was then invested into the institution.’

20/20 Reflection, Holly Graham, September 2024

As part of 20/20, Graham has commissioned early career researchers Destinie Reynolds, Serena Robinson and Ella Sinclair, through a collaboration with Global Threads; an initiative by UCL and The Science & Industry Museum, looking at drawing out histories of Transatlantic slavery within Manchester’s industrial history. This research has been developed with support from Matthew Stallard, University College London and Katie Belshaw, Science & Industry Museum.

20/20 Project

20/20 is an ambitious 3-year national commissioning and network programme led by the University of the Arts London (UAL) in partnership with the Decolonising Arts Institute. The project is funded by Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England and UAL. 20/20 combines artist residencies with artistic commissioning at scale to bring together 20 emerging artists of colour and 20 UK public art collections, leading to 20 new permanent acquisitions.

Artist Info

London-based artist Holly Graham is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, and Co-Founder of Cypher BILLBOARD, London. Graham’s practice explores ways in which memory and narrative shape collective histories. She works across audio, text, still and moving image, and sculptural forms, often using motifs inherent to the medium of print. The work she makes is heavily research-driven and is often specific to particular sites and localised contexts.